PROGRESS: CF Industries officials glad to be done with major expansion – Sioux City Journal

SERGEANT BLUFF Greg Kennette only took three days off of work last year, one of which was to witness the birth of his son.

Kennette is the commissioning superintendent for CF Industries. His previous around-the-clock work schedule is similar to the experience of just about everyone who had a hand in building or developing thenitrogen-based fertilizer manufacturer's$2 billion expansion to its Port Neal complex south of Sioux City.

That was everybody, said Nick DeRoos when told about Kennette's schedule. We were out here starting up in the middle of winter, right? Christmas was out here for a lot of people and thats something. The commitment of the people involved in this was just extraordinary.

DeRoos is the general manager of the CF Port Neal complex and served as the project director of the expansion, which at one time was the largest single private capital investment in Iowa history.

Ground broke on the mega expansion in fall 2013 and it required more than 5,300 construction workers to complete. Crews erected 33 new buildings, built a temporary jetty on the Missouri River and added 8.5 miles of rail line over a 350-acre site, which occupies a little more than three times the acreage of CFs original plant south of the expansion.

Some of the most prominent additions are a new administration building, a state-of-the-art shipping and weighing center for trucks, a new ammonia plant, a new granular urea plant and a third-of-a-mile-long granular urea warehouse, which CF officials noted is one of the largest facilities of its type in North America.

The new plants became operational late last year and expand the regional production capabilities of CF, which is based in Deerfield, Illinois.

The ammonia plant, which began production in late November, has operated at about its nameplate capacity of 2,425 tons per day, while the front end of the plant produces carbon dioxide used to manufacture urea in an adjacent plant.

With the additional facilities operations, total annual gross ammonia capacity at the CF complex is now 1.2 million tons, more than triple the 380,000 tons previously. Output from the new ammonia plant will largely be upgraded to urea, and total annual urea capacity at Port Neal is now 1.4 million tons, up from 50,000 tons previously.

DeRoos is excited about the additions and noted his crew is starting to adjust to operating the new facilities.

The guys are getting more accustomed to operating an operating plant versus still starting up the startup is unique, but they want to be operating, he said. They want the plant up, making product, lined out and basically predictable, reliable operations and thats where we're at today.

While CFs large-scale investment in itself is expected to aid the business, it also proved to be a major economic boon for the region during and after construction.

We worked with planning group, Woodbury County and a number of regional municipalities just anticipating that there were going to be some impacts, but the impact was more than we could have imagined at the time, DeRoos said. We didnt fully appreciate the scale of the project that we were doing until we got farther along.

Thousands of the construction workers came from out of state, and DeRoos noted that the taxes collected from the contractors plus the money they spent while here is almost unquantifiablebut significant.

It was good for the whole area; businesses thrived, he said. Our suppliers, we had all kinds of people, businesses in the area helping supply either directly or indirectly the materials and products and even services for the plant.

CF worked with more than 100 local vendors during the expansion and at least 700 local indirect jobs were created to support the endeavor. DeRoos said it was great to see the region come together to complete something this large.

It gave this whole area a great manufacturing facility for years to come, he said.

Additionally, CF brought on 125 new full-time employees to man its upgraded operations, increasing the total workforce of the complex to 270.

The majority of those people are local and they came from all walks of life teachers, accountants, car salesman all kinds of people joined us, DeRoos said of the new hires. The jobs that we are offering are very high-paying jobs.

With one major undertaken complete, CF plans to upgrade the ammonia converter system at its original nitrogen production plant over the next couple of years.

This project will cost about $25 million and require about 500 contractors to complete. Additionally, components of the upgrade are being shipped from Italy and will be barged to the site via the Missouri River this spring.

DeRoos noted its pretty standard for CF to upgrade equipment every couple of years and predicts that within the next decade a turnaround a process where a facility is completely shut down for maintenance activities will be required for the new plants.

However, with the newer project still a few months away, DeRoos still takes solace in the completion of CFs recent 10-digit undertaking.

Were glad its behind us, DeRoos joked. Were thrilled to be making product."

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PROGRESS: CF Industries officials glad to be done with major expansion - Sioux City Journal